Cave has announced the establishment of a new subsidiary called Cave Online Entertainment as of July 15th. The new entity's president will be Cave president Keiichi Takano, while former Atlus director Hideo Yokoyama will serve as company vice president. Yokoyama will also hold a 2.5% in the new company.

Cave Online Entertainment has confirmed the development of three online titles, one of them being Shin Megami Tensei Online IMAGINE. Cave is developing this PC-based MMORPG together with Atlus. Not only is Yokoyama acting as the game's producer, but the development team at Cave is apparently made up of former Atlus staffers as well.

The closed beta testing phase of Shin Megami Tensei Online IMAGINE ended on January 30th and the game's release is apparently forthcoming in the near future.

Originally Atlus had planned to release a Shin Megami Tensei-based MMORPG for Xbox. However the project was cancelled and only an offline version of Shin Megami Tensei NINE was eventually released. One year ago, in July 2004, Atlus then announced Shin Megami Tensei Online IMAGINE.

• GameWatch